A Story To Tell
by nebroadwe
Summary: Animeverse. Three very confused drug mules encounter Ed, Al and Hughes. Postseries AU.


**Author's Note:**_ This story takes place during the first arc of Crackbunny Syndrome's _Balance of Power_ (a link to which can be found on my profile page), but requires nothing more than an understanding of the basic premises of that work: that episode 25 didn't end as it seemed to and that Ed (his automail camouflaged by a layer of latex), a restored Al, and Maes Hughes have been forcibly relocated to the early twenty-first-century American Midwest and are now on the run from their chief antagonist in the company of a few friendly locals. I also borrowed some implicit backstory from Mikkeneko's novel-in-progress _Temperance_ (available at the Scimitar Smile website) because I'm enjoying it so much. My thanks to all these authors for the inspiration to attempt an action sequence._

_This story is for all the Crackbunnies, of course. (This is _your_ fault.)  
And for John, who kept begging for the next installment._

----------

Crawling on his hands and knees through the tunnel, Andy Prentice once more counted up the ways in which tonight sucked dead rhinos through a straw.

First, he'd had to cancel a date with Leah when Doc's contacts demanded a rush delivery and Leelee had pitched the hissy fit to end all hissy fits. That meant he wasn't getting any from her for at least a week; worse, he'd probably have to spend his third of the courier fee on a fancy night out to sweeten her up when she did decide to talk to him again. And he'd had his eye on a copy of _Dead Rising_ for his Xbox with that money. _Lose, lose, lose_.

Second, instead of sitting in the back of the theater with Leelee and ignoring the movie, he was stuck in this fricking tunnel with Toby whuffling along behind him like his Aunt Rachel's asthmatic beagle and Jay scooching along in front of him, stopping every ten feet to resettle the .38 tucked in his waistband. Andy liked Jay -- they'd been friends since third grade -- but not enough to enjoy spending twenty minutes staring at his butt.

Finally, the tunnel itself: barely tall enough to sit up in between the beams that supported the ceiling every few feet. Andy's backpack scraped against them whenever he forgot to keep low. Sometimes it snagged, bringing him up short with a nasty jerk of the straps into his shoulders or sending him sprawling sideways onto the dirt floor. He'd gone down twice already and had to listen to Toby's snickers and Jay's hurry-up growls. Jay hated the tunnel even more than Andy did -- claustrophobia, Andy thought, though he'd never say so where Toby could hear. Whatever the reason, Jay always insisted on taking the lead and setting a pace that made it difficult to stay scrunched over and avoid the stupid beams.

Only Toby had been excited when Doc told them about his foolproof new method for getting over to the roadhouse unseen. Andy thought "unseen" was pushing it: they still had to hump three backpacks full of meth from Doc's lab to the burnt-out shell of the old Trautz place. But Toby had burbled on about those gangsters down in Mexico who dug tunnels under the border big enough to drive trucks full of cocaine and illegals through. _Yeah,_ Jay had drawled when the idiot stopped for breath. _We're _real_ drug dealers now._

_Like he should talk_, Andy thought as Jay paused yet again to adjust the gun in the small of his back, _bringing _that_ along. What does he think he's gonna need it for?_ Doc would pitch a fit if he knew. The whole reason he'd hired them was that they were too young to get into serious trouble if they were caught. As long as they stuck to the story about the dealers in Salina he had drilled into them until even Toby could recite it word-perfect, nobody would trace the meth back to Doc, either. Andy wasn't clear how that benefitted them, but Doc had promised to stand behind them if they landed in the shit and rehire them once they got off probation. Andy figured it was better not to get caught at all. Even Toby agreed with him about that -- he wasn't quite as dumb as the mullet and freckles made him look.

As if to prove Andy wrong, Toby suddenly piped up in a helium-voiced whine, "Are we there yet?"

"Shaddup," Jay answered.

Andy's pack hooked itself on the roof again. His head snapped back, sending the light from his climber's lamp arcing over Jay to pick out the next set of props. Doc said the tunnel was probably a relic of the Underground Railroad; there were plaques all over downtown commemorating the families who'd helped slaves escape to Canada before the Civil War. Sometimes, on runs like this, Andy tried to imagine himself a slave, hungry and tired but snatching his one chance at freedom and a better life. The way his old man rode his ass, it was easy to do. Someday, Andy promised himself, rubbing his neck and crawling on, he'd use the money in the tackle box hidden behind the return vent in his room to buy a car and get the hell out of here -- take Leelee and his guitar and drive to Seattle or California and join a band and never look back.

Half-distracted by a daydream of Leelee dancing as he played, he almost ran his nose into Jay's pants before he noticed the other boy had stopped. Toby did run straight into his rear and Andy kicked him away. "Watch it, asshole!"

"You watch it!" Toby said, grabbing his sneaker and twisting it like he meant to pull it off.

"Both of you, shaddup!" Jay growled.

Andy kicked again, grazing something; Toby yelped and dropped his foot. Jay ignored them, reaching overhead to work the catch on the trap door at the tunnel's end. _Almost there,_ Andy thought._ Maybe I'll be home in time to meet Leelee for the ten p.m. show._ It was a stupid thing to hope -- Leelee'd blow him right off, as mad as she was, and Doc's contacts always left them waiting for ages. Andy was beginning to think that Doc deliberately sent them over well ahead of time, like his mom telling his dad that Great-Uncle John's funeral started at twelve-thirty instead of one o'clock so she didn't miss any of the good bits when they arrived twenty minutes late. Andy wished Doc trusted them more or that his contacts would get it together, whichever it was. He hated all the sitting around, usually in the dark, with Toby making unfunny wisecracks. _Please, God, let them be on time tonight._

Jay finally sprang the catch and turned off his headlamp, pulling it down to hang around his neck. Once Andy and Toby had switched theirs off, too, Jay pushed the trap door up about four inches to reconnoiter. His crewcut was silhouetted against the gray rectangle for half a second; then he dropped down with a curse and Andy heard the trap bang dully into its frame. "What?" he asked.

"Somebody's there," Jay said, low and tense. "There's a light."

_Oh, great._ "It's probably just the guys for the pickup," Andy replied, trying to sound like he believed it.

"Since when do they ever come early?" asked Jay.

"First time for everything," Andy answered with a shrug.

The joke fell flat. He could hear Jay jittering around by the trap, his backpack rasping along the wall. He was probably playing with that damn gun again. _I hate this._ Jay had been on edge for weeks, ever since he'd been dropped from the JV wrestling squad because of his grades. Andy wished he'd pull himself together and stop acting like a girl with a bad case of PMS over it. Lately Jay'd been sniping at him about all the time he spent working on the school paper, as if Andy had only taken up sports reporting to cover Jay or something. Okay, it was kind of fun interviewing a friend, but he hadn't joined the paper to become Jay's personal publicist and he wasn't going to quit just because Jay couldn't figure out what to do with himself now that he wasn't wrestling. "Look," he tried again, "let's go up quiet and check it out. If it's Doc's guys, no problem. If it's some other kids fooling around, we can scare the shit out of them and run them off. Okay?"

"Sounds good to me," Toby agreed.

"Nobody asked you, dumbass," Jay snapped, but at least he wasn't tossing the suggestion straight into the trash. What else could they do, except abort the run? They'd catch six kinds of hell from Doc about that and maybe get themselves fired. Jay knew that as well as Andy did, even if it took him a minute to calm down and remember it. "All right," he said. "Nice and quiet. Don't even think about fucking this up, Toby."

"Trust me!" Toby said brightly.

_Yeah, as far as we could throw you,_ Andy thought as Jay sniggered. Toby made a huffy, offended noise, but had the sense not to say anything else. Jay pushed the trap door up for another peek, then threw it over and climbed out. Andy followed right on his heels and Toby, panting, on his.

The tunnel came up inside the scrubby woods behind the roadhouse, mostly screened from view, but they ducked right back into the brush, just in case. Toby closed the trap behind them. Shut, it sat flush against the ground, weathered gray and inconspicuous. Someone had nailed branches across the top that caught dead leaves and things, camouflaging it further. None of them had forgotten how they'd lost track of it the first time they'd used it and then gone stomping all over hell's half-acre in the freezing dark before they found it again. On the next run they'd marked its location with a big rock. They hadn't mentioned the problem or its solution to Doc. What he didn't know, he couldn't needle them about.

Circling around to the east, they headed toward the roadhouse's blind side, where the kitchen had been. The dusk favored them, shadowy enough to hide in without being too dark to see. Before the trees blocked his view completely, Andy made out something shining behind the loosely shuttered window down by the main room, bobbing around and holding steady and bobbing around again. _Flashlight_, he thought. _Somebody doing something, not just sitting still_. Never mind what he'd said to Jay; Andy knew the light in the building had nothing to do with Doc's buyers. They almost never arrived before nightfall. He'd be really pissed off if it turned out to be a bunch of grade-school kids scaring each other with shadows, but that was better than the alternatives his brain kept suggesting: the police investigating the place or a realtor trying to sell it to somebody or anyone older, bigger, meaner or more numerous than the three of them. In which case they'd have to figure out some way to intercept Doc's guys before they hit the front door. _And_, he thought, watching Jay rip a branch off a sapling to clear it out of his way, _keep out of trouble in the meantime_.

With that thought pushing adrenaline into his muscles, he cut in front of his friend as they crept along the back of the roadhouse and planted himself beneath the casement with the broken shutter. Jay prodded him roughly in the spine. Suppressing a yelp, Andy glared and waved him on. Jay glared back and elbowed Andy's ribs as he passed, but he took up station at the other end of the window while Toby hovered behind Andy's right shoulder. Andy congratulated himself. He'd never have won if there'd been an argument, but they were too close to risk the noise. He could hear voices inside the roadhouse; bending an ear toward the window, he strained to catch what they were saying, trying to figure out how many people were there and what they were up to.

" -- use Lorenz's stricture instead?" he heard somebody ask -- not a grown-up. Citified accent. _Not from around here_.

Another voice, younger and prissier, answered, "Because we just want to ping a gate, not activate it."

"'Ping a gate'?" retorted the first voice. "You've been talking to Ducky again, haven't you?"

Pressing sideways against the brick facade, Andy eased himself up till he could peer over the windowsill where the hanging shutter left a thin triangular opening. Inside the room he saw two kids, boys, one squatting next to a fluorescent emergency lantern, the other pacing back and forth with a flashlight. Both of them were staring at a crazy design chalked on the wooden floor: a big circle with a many-pointed star in the middle of it, like the pentacles on some of Andy's metal CDs, but elaborated with all kinds of loops and curlicues and funky lettering. _What are these guys?_ he wondered. _Satanists?_ They didn't look like Satanists -- or, at least, not what Andy thought Satanists ought to look like. The squatting kid was government-issue middle-class white bread, dressed in jeans and a Purdue T-shirt. The standing one, who at least was wearing leather pants and combat boots, had long blond hair pony-tailed back from a face as pretty as Leelee's. _Don't tell her that_. No piercings, no Gothy make-up. They didn't sound like Satanists, either -- more like those guys on _CSI_.

" -- okay, so there's less chance of a rebound with tau's base grounded, but why not ground all three points and set up a pseudo-site?" the girly-boy was arguing. He stopped pacing to shine his flashlight down on the circle. "We could pull in a lot more information that way, rather than just triangulate for a gate location."

"But then we'd have to input values for air and water as well," said the other kid, "and we can't calculate those until we understand the nature of the energy being transferred along the leylines."

Girly-boy ran a hand through his bangs. "We could fake air -- you can always fake air -- but water ... " He walked around the edge of the circle, flashing his light over different parts of it. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Toby poked Andy's shoulder. "Who are these guys? They sound like dorks."

_Takes one to know one_, said the little voice in the back of Andy's head that almost always got him in trouble when he let it use his mouth. He ignored it and looked over at Jay. "Wait 'em out?" he whispered. "We still got time."

Jay shook his head emphatically. "Let's roust 'em."

Andy shook his head back and checked on the kids again. Girly-boy was hunkered down now, too, his back to them. "I'm just not comfortable using a visual cue," he said.

"I wanted to keep it simple."

Girly-boy's head came up. "Simple's good," he reassured the other kid. "It's the duration I'm worried about. There's so much waste coruscation -- how are we gonna see one or two little sparks when the whole thing's going off like Mustang on a bender? What if we looped the secondary cursus?" He leaned over, setting his flashlight on the floor so it illuminated one of the curlicues, and added some more strokes to the pattern with a soft screech of chalk. "You know, internally."

"Before it grounds?" asked the kid.

"Yeah. Just give it somewhere to play during initialization -- "

Jay began to look seriously irked. "What's your problem?" he asked. "Only two of 'em, right?"

_I thought we were gonna keep this quiet. Jesus H. Christ._ "Let's go down to the parking spot and wait for the guys there," Andy suggested, keeping hold of his own temper with some difficulty. Leelee didn't like to be contradicted when she was in one of her moods, either, but a high-maintenance girlfriend was just a pain in the ass -- Jay going prima-donna could get them all in serious trouble.

"In plain sight?" Jay made a _you-out-of-your-mind?_ face and Toby chortled. Andy ground his teeth. "Besides, what if these dorks decide to stop BSing and go for a walk?"

"There's only two of them," Andy parroted back. Then he froze, waving Jay off as the other boy shifted to bring Andy within range of his fists. Something was wrong. The conversation inside the roadhouse had stopped. Andy peeked through the window again and his stomach flipped. Girly-boy and the kid were both looking straight at him. _Shit! Shit, shit, shit!_ He slid out of sight fast, losing his balance and landing hard on his butt. "They saw me!"

Jay grunted something, slammed the shutters back and jumped through the empty casement. Toby followed, scrambling gracelessly over the sill. Andy considered running back to the tunnel to warn Doc that the transfer was shot to hell, but he couldn't leave Jay with no one but Toby for back-up, not even to face two dorky city boys. He stood up and hauled himself over the windowsill, tumbling inside only slightly less awkwardly than Toby.

_Bet we look threatening, sure_, remarked the little voice.

_Shut up_, Andy told it as he went to stand next to Jay, leaving Toby to hang out by the window as if he was thinking about rabbiting back the way he'd come. _Loser. _

Girly-boy and the kid were on their feet beyond the circle, which appeared even weirder close up. _Are those Arabic letters? These guys couldn't be terrorists, could they?_ They didn't seem scared at all: girly-boy was eyeballing Jay the same way Andy's mom watched the cat when she thought it might be about to throw up on the living-room rug. Andy saw Jay hackle and groaned to himself. There was no way this was going to end well.

"What are you doing here?" girly-boy asked, just as Jay's lips began to form the W of the same question.

Jay closed his mouth, then grated out, "That's our line. This is our place."

Girly-boy deliberately scanned the room, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. "Your housekeeping's lousy."

"Ha, ha," Jay said. "Go call _Last Comic Standing_. And while you're at it -- " he whipped out a middle finger and pointed it at the front door -- "get the fuck out."

"What if we're not finished here yet?" Girly-boy didn't make a move, which Andy found more unnerving than Jay's posturing. Everything about these guys was off. Even the way the kid reached over to put a hand on girly-boy's right arm, restraining him, was too calm, too deliberate. _Like they haven't got a thing to worry about_. Andy found himself listening for other voices, wondering who else was in the building or out front to back these kids up. _More city boys? A gang? Coming in here was the stupidest thing we could've done ..._

He revised his opinion in the next second when Jay pulled the .38 from his waistband and aimed it right at girly-boy's pretty face. _No, _that's_ the stupidest thing we could've done_. "Jay!" he exclaimed.

"I say you are finished here, midget," Jay said, taking no note of him.

_Midget?_ Girly-boy was shorter than the kid, sure, but Jay was no Shaq himself. The insult struck home, though: girly-boy's face flushed dark and the kid took a firmer grip on his arm as he leaned forward. "Who are you calling small enough for a freak show?" he snarled.

"Brother," pleaded the kid, just as Andy repeated, more forcefully, "Jay!"

"Shut up!" Jay twitched the muzzle of the gun toward the door. "Go on. Get out."

Girly-boy wasn't inclined to move, despite the way the kid was pulling on his biceps. _He must be out of his mind on something_, Andy thought. Anybody who couldn't see that Jay was just pissed enough to pull the trigger if provoked had to be stoned or blind. Or as dumb as Toby, who had edged up behind Jay with the eager expression of a geek watching two jocks going at it in the hall. _I swear to God, if I get out of this, I'm telling Doc I'm not working with either of these jerks ever again, so help me._

And then they all jumped at the sound of footsteps on the porch. Jay pivoted to aim at the door as it opened to reveal a tall, dark-haired white guy wearing glasses. "Okay, boys, wrap it up," he called as he entered. "Time to get this show -- " He broke off as the scene in front of him registered, his eyes darting from Jay and the gun to Toby and Andy and then over to girly-boy and the kid before focusing back on Jay. He didn't raise his hands, but he pushed them away from his body a little. "Trouble?" he asked.

"I thought you said this place was secure," girly-boy responded.

"I did," said the man. He left off measuring Jay to meet girly-boy's gaze. "Guess I was mistaken."

Andy didn't like the way they were staring at each other. _Speaking looks_ his mother would have called them: she and the rest of the aunts had the same trick of catching each other's eyes while they were talking about the weather or the price of heating oil that let you know they were really discussing something else, though you were lucky if you ever found out what. _And what do they mean by "secure"? Maybe they really _are _terrorists_. "Hey," he said, forcing the words out of a throat gone uncomfortably dry. "We don't want any trouble. Y'all just get on out of here and that'll be the end of it."

"Shaddup!" Jay barked. "D'you think they didn't hear what I said?"

"We heard you," replied the kid. "We just need to clean up and then we'll -- "

The sound of the safety clicking off wasn't even a quarter as loud as it would have been in the movies, but it raised goosebumps all over Andy's body. Jay slowly shifted his aim from glasses-guy to the kid. That got both boys' full attention: the kid let go of girly-boy's arm and girly-boy went as still as a cat ready to jump on a mouse. "Point that thing somewhere else," he said.

Andy kept an eye on Jay's trigger finger. His own right hand fidgeted as he considered grabbing Jay's arm to spoil his aim if he tried to fire. _No way_, he decided immediately, shivering, not needing the little voice to tell him it was a bad idea. Jay was smirking. "You ain't giving the orders here, _midget_," he said, drawing both syllables out, letting the insult linger.

Andy bit his lip, but girly-boy didn't explode. Instead, he took one careful step to the side, pushing the kid back as he put himself in the line of fire.

Jay laughed. "Oh, wow! We got ourselves a hero!"

"Brother, don't," whispered the kid, and Andy wished he could say the same thing to Jay. This was getting right out of hand. Toby was breathing heavily again, taking little shuffle-hops back toward the window. Jay and girly-boy eyed each other, Jay smiling, girly-boy intent. Calculating. He wasn't going to back down, not with the kid to protect. Andy found some words at last, or they found him, spilling out of his mouth. "For God's sake, Jay, quit messing around! We aren't here for this!"

"I agree," said glasses-guy, quietly enough that nobody startled even if, like Andy, they had all but forgotten him. "Come on, boys. We're leaving."

The kid glanced over at him. "The array ... "

"It can't be helped," glasses-guy answered. "Let's go, like they asked us to."

He put just enough emphasis on the last phrase to remind Jay of what he'd been trying to do in the first place; the little voice, giddy with relief, suggested Andy file the technique for use on Leelee. "One at a time," Jay said, jerking his chin at the door. Then, his smile widening, he added to girly-boy, "You first."

Unfortunately, girly-boy hadn't gotten the memo. "There's no way in hell," he said, "that I'm walking out of here alone."

Andy, the kid and glasses-guy all grimaced, sharing a moment of exasperated camaraderie. _Idiot. Now what?_

Jay settled more firmly into his stance. "You deaf in one ear, too?" he asked. "I said, you aren't in charge here."

"I don't take orders well," said girly-boy grimly. The kid sighed and glasses-guy's lips twisted; Andy swallowed a snicker "And even if I did," girly-boy added angrily -- well, he could hardly have missed all the sideline commentary -- "I wouldn't take 'em from a jerk with nothing but a gun to back him up!"

"Tough talk," Jay said, sighting ostentatiously along the .38's barrel. "Bet you'd cry like a girl with a few holes in you."

Girly-boy bared his teeth. "Try me."

The porch creaked underfoot again. Nobody jumped this time, for which Andy could only be thankful. Jay kept his gun aimed squarely at girly-boy, who was still grinning like a shark. Everyone else's attention was divided between the standoff and the entrance. _What now?_ Andy wondered. _More of them? Is it too early for Doc's guys?_ He'd lost track of time, but surely they ought to be showing up soon.

Somebody thumped on the door. Andy let go of a breath he hadn't known he was holding. _Doc's guys. They always knock._ Jay muttered something at him, adding a sidelong glower when he didn't respond. Andy realized belatedly that Jay wanted him to answer the door. _No way! What if it's _not_ them?_ He turned to glasses-guy, who was exchanging speaking looks with the kid now, and said, "Get that."

Glasses-guy didn't move. The door juddered under a second, louder thump. "Get it!" Jay ordered, his voice as sharp as broken glass. "Or I'll put a fucking hole right through him!"

Andy winced. He tried to will glasses-guy to be smart: _Come on, man, just do what you're told!_ He hoped that Jay had the sense to aim for a leg or something if he had to follow through. Andy had never felt less in control of a situation in his entire life, not even counting the time somebody had sideswiped his mom's car in the rain and they'd spun out and slammed into the guardrail. That had only lasted a few seconds; this scene felt like it had been going on for days.

Glasses-guy split the difference between obedience and defiance, moving toward the entrance in his own time and never once turning his back on the gun. He opened the door in the middle of a third knock to two guys in windbreakers and baseball caps -- one red, the other blue. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said coolly. "Glad you could join us."

Red-hat frowned. Andy wasn't sure he'd seen either of these guys before. Doc's buyers rarely sent the same people twice for a pickup, but they all looked alike: middle height, muscular, tanned, like the Slavs who did installation work for Home Depot, but without the weird accents. "What's going on here?" red-hat asked finally.

"Trespassers," Jay said before anyone else could get a word in.

"Should've guessed there'd be rats living here," girly-boy shot back.

"Shut up, midget," Jay taunted him.

Girly-boy's smile disappeared. "Keep calling me that and I'll make you eat it raw."

"Ooh," Jay fluted, "did I hurt your feelings, shorty? You're even cuter when you're angry." He puckered up his lips. "C'mon over here and give us a kiss."

"All right, that's enough," said red-hat, as the kid grabbed girly-boy by the shoulders before he could do more than shift his weight. "I didn't come here to watch a pissing contest. You with the gun, back off."

Jay's face hardened; he didn't move. _Power trip_, Andy thought. _What the hell's gotten into him?_ It couldn't be just girly-boy's attitude, though that wasn't helping. But he didn't have time to work it out before red-hat and blue-hat drew their own guns -- newer, sleeker and much bigger than Jay's dad's revolver.

Andy froze where he stood; he heard Toby whimper. _Too much. This is too fucking much_. He'd never seen so many firearms being aimed with intent except at the range, where pointing a gun at someone else got you banned for life and probably arrested. They'd all forgotten the rules. He'd signed on with Doc for the easy money and the free samples, not to wrangle with Satanists or watch someone get shot. "Jay!" he blurted. "For fuck's sake -- !"

"I said, put that pea-shooter down, Trigger," red-hat drawled. "And make sure the safety's on."

Andy's heart pounded three times against his ribs before Jay lowered the gun and safed it. _Thank God. Thank God._ His relief lasted two beats longer -- then he realized that red-hat and blue-hat still had the whole room covered. _It ain't over till it's over_, observed the little voice, _and maybe not even then._ Half a giggle slipped past Andy's clenched teeth before he got hold of himself. _Don't freak. Freaking out is _not_ going to help._

"Right," said red-hat. "Now, who's got what we came for?"

Jay was staring at his feet. Sulking? Sobered up? Either way, he wasn't taking the lead anymore. Andy cleared his throat. "That -- that'd be us, sir."

Red-hat gestured left-handed at a spot on the floor in front of him. "Toss it over here, then."

"Yessir." Andy pulled his right arm out of the strap and slid the backpack down the other to the crook of his elbow. Jay shrugged out of his and let it fall to the ground behind him. _Sulking. Jesus. _Andy picked it up and turned to Toby, who was holding his pack in front of him like a shield. As soon as Andy relieved him of it, Toby dropped his hands to cover his crotch, but not so fast that Andy didn't see the damp stain on his jeans. For once, he didn't feel the least bit inclined to laugh. He set all three backpacks down where red-hat had pointed and retreated to Jay's side again.

Blue-hat squatted and quickly checked the packs over without opening them up; then he stood and nodded once at red-hat. Red-hat trained his gun on glasses-guy, then swung it over to indicate girly-boy and the kid. "Friends of yours?" he asked Andy, heavy on the irony.

"Nosir," whispered Andy. "Never saw 'em before 'n my life."

"I'm sure we don't want any trouble," glasses-guy said. Andy saw the kid bear down on girly-boy's shoulders. Girly-boy rolled his eyes, but didn't do anything else.

"That's too bad," said red-hat, "because now you've got plenty. Over there with the kids." He gestured with the gun as glasses-guy hesitated.

Andy was abruptly certain that these guys didn't even _have_ safeties for their weapons. Silencers, maybe, but not safeties. Glasses-guy walked around the perimeter of the circle to stand at girly-boy's left; the kid stepped up on his right. Red-hat snapped his fingers at blue-hat, who pulled an envelope from inside his windbreaker and tossed it to Andy. He nearly dropped it, his hands slick with sweat and unresponsive, but once he had it in his grip he held it tight. _I'm not losing my last paycheck. First thing we get home, I'm telling Doc I quit. I'd rather flip burgers at Mickey D's than go through this again, ever._

"All right," said red-hat. "Skedaddle."

"What about them?" asked Jay, looking up, eyes narrowed.

"None of your business now, Trigger," red-hat informed him. "We'll take care of them. You go on home and let your momma tuck you up in bed for the night like a good boy."

Jay bristled, but Andy was past caring. _"Take care of them?" How?_ Not the way it sounded, for sure. This wasn't _CSI_ or _Law and Order_; real criminals didn't kill people half as often as t.v. made out, right? He knew he'd heard that in school or on the news or somewhere. It was too messy, raised too many questions. This was a business deal; they'd probably pay 'em off or something and hit the road back to the city. Andy pulled on Jay's sleeve. "C'mon, let's go."

"You should have said you didn't want witnesses," the kid put in. He seemed unhappy, his left foot tapping nervously beside the circle. "If you'd warned us, we could have closed our eyes."

And damned if he didn't right then, as if to demonstrate. Girly-boy, even more surprisingly, followed suit. "Yeah, that's easy enough. Why didn't you say?"

Glasses-guy's jaw dropped half an inch; then he recovered and closed his own eyes. "Perhaps they didn't realize who they're dealing with," he said. "We're not as slow on the uptake as some."

Blue-hat snickered derisively. Red-hat, however, was not amused. "What is this, the Three Stooges?" he demanded.

"I just don't enjoy watching someone aim a gun at me," glasses-guy explained.

"Me, neither," agreed girly-boy. Jay opened his mouth to say something, but Andy pinched him viciously and it turned into a hiss.

"Kids shouldn't have to carry them," said the kid, turning his head toward Jay and Andy as if he could see them through his lids. He sounded ... he sounded sorry, Andy thought, incredulous. _Why should he feel that way about us?_

"I see your point," glasses-guy acknowledged. Then he smiled. "That is, I will in a moment."

"Good," answered the kid.

"Great," red-hat sneered. "I'm glad you've got that straightened out. Now, listen, here's what -- "

The kid clapped his hands and dropped into a crouch, fingers extended toward the circle. The moment they touched it, a light like fifty flashbulbs exploded upward with a high, singing hum -- if that wasn't just the ringing in Andy's own ears. He threw his arms in front of his face and reeled away from the brightness. The empty room threw back metallic echoes of the racket that broke out: shouts, screeches, another clap and a stutter of ... gunfire? Panicking, Andy ducked, rubbing his eyes with one hand and flailing out with the other. _Jay -- where's Jay? Gotta get out of here!_ Floating afterimages confused his sight as he squinted. He could hear the sounds of a fight -- punches being thrown, grunts and gasps as they connected or missed -- but none of Jay's usual war cries. _Ohshitohgodohshit ..._ His vision cleared and he caught something moving on his right; he whirled to face it, just in time to watch the kid's foot crash straight into his stomach.

He folded up around the blow and collapsed, unable to do anything while his body decided whether to suck in air or throw up dinner. The need to breathe won out; for a while the rattle of oxygen in his windpipe was louder than the pandemonium around him: moans and thuds and yelps and an irregular scratching right by his head. _Mice? _Andy forced himself to focus. Not a mouse -- it was the kid, squatting maybe two feet away from him, putting the finishing touches on a smaller psychedelic circle. As Andy blinked, the kid tucked the stick of chalk he'd been using behind his ear and pressed his hands to the edge of his drawing.

Light fireworked up again, less intense but still painfully brilliant. Slamming his eyelids shut, Andy stuck a finger in each ear and tried to roll away from the musical whine. The floor bent beneath him; he put out his hands to keep from falling in the unexpected hole and felt the boards give like the rubber seats of playground swings. A wide belt snaked across his waist from hips to chest, pinning his arms to his sides and his body to the melting ground. He yelled and arched his back, but the belt tightened and hardened back into wood and all the leverage he could bring to bear didn't shift it an inch.

Andy craned his neck in all directions: there was Toby by the window, shaking, caught on his side by another wooden shackle; and there was Jay, motionless, head lolled over on his shoulder, pinned likewise; and there was the kid, his fingers still splayed on his pentacle like something out of Harry Potter. "Brother!" he called.

Girly-boy leaped away from blue-hat (whom he'd backed to the wall with a huge knife -- _knife!_), tripping red-hat away from his fight with glasses-guy in the process. Andy had never seen moves like that in anything other than a video game. _Who _are_ these guys?_ A third fountain of light, but this time Andy screwed up his eyes to cut the glare and goggled as the floor spiraled up around red-hat and blue-hat like an eruption of chocolate soft-serve, so that when it was over they stood wrapped from toe to chin in wood, white-faced and speechless.

Andy sympathized. Even the little voice had nothing to say.

"Nicely done," said glasses-guy, like a basketball coach complimenting his players on a well-executed drill. He shook out his hands and stretched, wincing as he rolled his shoulders.

"How's the arm?" asked girly-boy. Andy wondered where he'd been hiding the machete strapped to his right wrist or if maybe the kid had created it for him out of thin air.

"Just a little sore. Nothing to worry about."

"Uh-huh," said girly-boy in a way that meant _I've heard that one before_. "Better have Tom take a look at it. We don't need you going down again." He smiled a little, taking the sting out of his hectoring tone.

"Yes, mother," glasses-guy responded dryly.

With a snort, girly-boy clapped his hands and the knife-blade withdrew beneath the skin of his forearm, leaving nothing but a bloodless tear above his wrist. Andy's eyes opened so wide they seemed to wobble in their sockets. _Wolverine. He's just like Wolverine. But how?_

He wasn't the only one thinking along those lines. Toby let out a squeal, half-terrified, half-ecstatic. "They're mutants! Honest-to-God mutants! Holy crap!"

"No, we're not," said glasses-guy, waving girly-boy back as he rounded on Toby. The kid chuckled; girly-boy turned to scowl at him and he shrugged. Meanwhile, glasses-guy made tsk-tsking noises and waggled his index finger at Toby. "You've been reading too many graphic novels."

Toby's voice dropped down out of the stratosphere as he screwed his head around to (Andy groaned) argue. "How else could he do that to his arm?"

Girly-boy brushed past glasses-guy to loom over Toby. "You want to find out?"

Even sideways on, the glower was more intimidating than it should have been, coming from someone that short. _Looks taller when he's standing up and you're tied down_, commented the little voice, but softly. Toby clammed up so tight Andy heard his teeth click. Girly-boy leered at him. After about five seconds of all-but-audible dithering, Toby squinched his eyes shut, curling his chin to his chest and his knees against the wooden band around his midsection. _That's it for him_, Andy thought, reflexively scornful, and then: _It's just me now. Oh, God!_ He held very still, hoping they'd all forget about him somehow.

"What now?" asked the kid. He turned the chalk in his fingers -- not nervously, but thoughtfully -- as he took inventory of the room. It was a good question: Jay and Toby were both out of it and so was Andy, if it came to that, but the other guys were now struggling in their cocoons as if they thought they could escape. Girly-boy, dismissing Toby, turned his evil eye on them, but they glared straight back. _If I were him, I'd get the hell out of here_, Andy thought and then realized what that would mean. Nobody but Doc knew they were here and he couldn't tell -- not without blowing his operation. Their parents would call the cops eventually, but it might take days for a search to find them. _They wouldn't -- they wouldn't walk off and leave us like this, would they?_

"Let's see what all the fuss is about," said glasses-guy.

He pulled on a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket and knelt beside the nearest backpack, tilting it toward the lantern. Andy held his breath. Glasses-guy unzipped all the compartments and stretched them wide, then poked around inside with one hand. The kid looked on with curiosity and girly-boy with impatience. "Have we got time for this?" he asked.

"Probably. Aha!"

Andy tensed as glasses-guy pulled out one of the Ziploc baggies full of meth. _Maybe they won't know what it is_, he thought, which was stupid: you didn't hide salt in a secret pocket. _Maybe they'll wanna buy it themselves._ Except Doc's contacts wouldn't like that and he'd watched enough t.v. to know what happened when you crossed people like them.

_Maybe you'll wake up and find this was all a dream_, offered the little voice.

He couldn't tell whether it was trying to comfort him or make fun of him.

"What is that stuff?" girly-boy wanted to know.

Glasses-guy held the bag in front of the lamp. "At a guess, methamphetamine." His lenses flashed briefly in the fluorescent glow and then his eyes were staring right into Andy's. Andy flinched. Glasses-guy raised an eyebrow and looked back at the baggie, but Andy knew he'd been made. _Shit, shit, SHIT!_

"Amphetamine?" The kid cocked his head to one side, frowning. "That's a stimulant, isn't it?"

"Yes. Methamphetamine is one of its chemical cousins. It has a couple of legitimate medical indications, but it's usually ingested for ... recreational purposes." Glasses-guy returned the baggie to its pocket.

"Illegally." Girly-boy wasn't asking a question.

"Mm-hmm. High potential for abuse and no traditional social or religious uses, not to mention all the toxic waste produced during the refining process, so the authorities disapprove." Glasses-guy picked up the envelope Andy had dropped and hefted it. "A careful chemist can earn a good living making and selling this stuff." He tossed the money back onto the floor. "For a while."

"I see," said girly-boy. He reached out and gave glasses-guy a hand up. Andy got a second glimpse of that unbleeding gash in his skin; the sight made him queasy, but not half as sick as he felt when girly-boy pinned him with a stare that wasn't girly in the least. His expression was all edges: when he smiled, it was like watching that blade come out of his arm again. "So, hang 'em up by their thumbs or their ankles?"

Andy would have shrieked like Toby except that his body seemed to have decided it was safest not to move or make a noise or even breathe. _No! _He managed to roll his eyes toward the kid, but he was looking at his brother, his face set like flint. _Why? Dry drunks? Or somebody OD their sister?_ He didn't dare ask. All that mattered, anyway, was that this time the kid wouldn't try to stop girly-boy from doing what he wanted. Andy's glance slid to glasses-guy and he knew it was pleading -- hoped it was as pitiful as a hungry dog begging for scraps, because he didn't want to be hung up by his thumbs or lie here and starve or bleed out with a knife in his throat or a bullet in his back or ... _God, sir, please, please ..._

Glasses-guy met his gaze for a moment, weighing him up; then his mouth curled slowly into a smile. _And then the Grinch got an idea_, gibbered the little voice in Andy's head. _The Grinch got a wonderful, _awful_ idea ..._

"Oh, no," said glasses-guy softly. "No, I know _just_ what to do with them."

-----

Bert McAfee had been cruising down Manoa Road toward town and a fresh cup of coffee when the call came in: 10-10 at the abandoned roadhouse off Route 212 -- lights, loud noises, the usual. _Shoot_, he thought as he made a U-turn and arrangements with fellow officer Tim Drake to meet at the foot of the roadhouse drive. _There goes another quiet evening_. He hoped it was just a bunch of kids throwing a party and not a bunch of kids deciding to burn the place down for yuks.

He picked up Tim at the corner of Finley and 212, as luck would have it, and they proceeded east together for the final five minutes of the trip. The dirt-and-gravel drive was closed by a wooden gate, but the faded NO TRESPASSING sign wouldn't have kept a six-year-old from lifting the latch, much less a teenager. Tim pushed the gate aside so they could both pull through. The track wound back into the trees quite a ways from the highway; the roadhouse had always been one of those "if you have to ask" places, particularly during its heyday in the dry twenties and dirty thirties. Bert's dad, God rest him, had had plenty of stories to tell about the goings-on there -- at least when Bert's mom was busy in the kitchen. Bert's own stories about the place, he reflected, were all boring and all the same: bunch of kids getting drunk or stoned to raucous, profane ... he guessed he had to call it music. _I know Dad always said The Who sounded like noise, but if he could hear this stuff ..._

As Bert drove around the bend to the bare spot where the kids usually parked their cars, he noticed the first oddity of the evening: only one vehicle present, and not a pickup truck or a family minivan or a cheap used compact, either. Bert stuck a hand out his window to wave at Tim and they rolled to a stop on either side of the shiny new SUV -- so shiny-new it still had a paper license plate stuck in the back window. Empty, they determined quickly. Tim lowered his flashlight, asking, "You wanna call this in while I do a quick look-see around the house?"

"Sure," Bert said. Tim was twenty pounds lighter and ten years younger than he, as well as a durned sight quieter in the woods in the dark. "Don't roust 'em without me."

Tim nodded and headed off up the drive. Bert hit the call button on his radio. "Dispatch, Charlie-Three."

_"Go ahead, Charlie-Three."_

"Madge, I got a dark blue Subaru Forester parked out at the roadhouse with dealer tags -- can you give me a 10-15?"

_"Sure thing, Bert -- fire away."_

He rattled off the information and waited for Madge to run it through the computer. Say what you would about how finicky they could be -- when the computers were working, they made his job so much easier it wasn't worth considering going back to the Good Old Days the Chief liked to invoke. (_When men were real men and police officers wrote their reports on yellow pads with quill pens ... _) He leaned against the side of his car without troubling to get too comfortable. Sure enough, not more than a minute later Madge was back on the horn. _"Charlie-Three, dispatch. I got nothing on those tags."_

"What kind of nothing, Madge?" Bert asked patiently. She was probably between cups of coffee as well or she'd have remembered all the brouhaha about drug pushers and other miscreants using fake dealer tags to avoid ID. Texas was making the most noise about the problem, but it wasn't confined to the deep South ...

_"Big nothing, Charlie-Three,"_ came the response, a little sharp. Bert grinned; Madge did hate to be caught out. _"No such number in the database."_

"10-4, dispatch." Bert looked up at the sound of a step; it was Tim returning and looking a little grim. "What's the news?"

"Lights on, but only at one end of the place, near the front door. No music, or at least nothing I could hear. Awfully quiet."

"Fake tag," Bert said, nodding at the Subaru.

"Shit."

"You said it." Bert thumbed the radio open again. "Dispatch, Charlie-Three. Tim and I are going up to the roadhouse now. Looks a bit quiet for a party; might be something else."

_"10-4, Charlie-Three. You be careful out there."_

"Thanks, Madge." Bert pushed away from the car, automatically checking himself to make sure that all his equipment was in place and ready for use. Then he gestured at Tim to lead on.

They hugged the edge of the woods, picking their way from shadow to shadow and (in Bert's case) trying not to turn an ankle on the stony ground. No cover between the end of the drive and the front porch, but it was only a few seconds' dash. Bert could see the light seeping out between the cracks in the shutters over the window on his right; he could hear a little noise, too, muffled voices, but Tim was right: it wasn't happy-party noise. Some of the squeaks and yelps sounded distressed, but not desperate. Bert looked across the stoop at Tim, who pointed at himself and drew his gun. Bert nodded, unholstering his own weapon. Tim took a deep breath and kicked the door open; yelling, "Police!" he leaped through with Bert following to cover him, ready for anything ...

... except what he actually saw.

The light in the room was provided by a number of flashlights and climbers' headlamps, most of which were pointed at the windows. One helpfully spotlighted a small heap of backpacks and three firearms -- two Glock semiautomatics and a .38. The other was trained on an enormous net bag full of unhappy people hanging from a hook in the ceiling.

"The hell?" Tim said, sounding as flummoxed as Bert felt.

"Hey!" one of the people in the bag yelled. "Get us down!"

Bert's brain kicked back into gear. "Check the rest of the place first," he said to Tim. There was no way they could get something that big off the hook by themselves, anyway; they'd have to call in the FD. "Hang in there, y'all," he said and then winced as the unintentional pun caught up with him. "I mean, just wait a sec. Anybody hurt? Anybody else here?"

A chorus of negatives and more pleas to get them the fuck _down_ came in answer. "Watch your language," Bert said -- some of those voices sounded awfully young. _What in blue blazes is going on here?_ "We're just going to have a look 'round and then we'll figure out how to get y'all out of that."

The rest of the roadhouse proved to be dark, empty and coated with dust. Bert was perversely cheered -- maybe they were finally convincing the local kids to steer clear of the place. _Except for these bozos. Bet they won't be back either, though._ Returning to the front room, Tim squatted next to the backpacks while Bert went to have a closer look at the net. It was swaying and turning as the people inside struggled to keep from squashing each other and Bert saw that a note had been attached to one side. He pulled it free, read it, and snorted. Then he looked up at the nearest half-a-face he could see pressed against the side of the bag. "Anybody wanna explain how you got in there?" he asked.

Nobody did. Or, rather, somebody did -- one of the young voices started to say, "It was those mu-- !" -- but the bag jerked and swung and the sentence ended in a smothered grunt. "Just get us down, man!" pleaded another voice.

"Hey, Bert," Tim said. "Come look at this."

Bert leaned over the younger man's shoulder. _Well, well, well_, he thought, not altogether surprised. The white powder might turn out to be sugar or something equally innocent, but he doubted it. Meth labs were popping up like mushrooms after rain these days and there were enough old farmhouses tucked away in the dark corners of the county to house more than one with nobody the wiser. "Better call for another car," he said, "and get fire-rescue to come haul these boys down without killing any of 'em. I'll do the honors here."

"Right," said Tim, pushing himself to his feet and making for the door.

Bert turned to the bag, which was heaving itself around with some force now. "Just settle down in there," he said. "The fire department'll be here soon enough to get y'all out of that. In the meantime, gentlemen, it is my pleasure to inform you that you're under arrest for trespassing. You have the right to remain silent ... "

Most of them didn't bother to exercise that right. The kids in particular began yelling up a storm about mutants and Satanists and terrorists and Lord knew what else. Having finished Mirandizing them, Bert kept half an ear on the cacophony in case anything relevant popped up. Mostly, however, he was considering the fact that at last he had a roadhouse story to stand with his dad's finest -- he had no doubt that he and Tim would be dining out on this one for weeks. The only fly in the ointment was the note: funny, sure, a great punch line, but the last thing this county needed was a vigilante with a skewed sense of humor running around trying to do law enforcement's job. Bert angled the paper toward the light and scrutinized it again. Forensics might be able to get some more information out of it, but all he could see was the obvious -- anonymous block capitals spelling out the message:

WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN.


End file.
